In the Rain
by Chigz
Summary: There are so many ways to fall in love, but this was unexpected. (PS... For once, I tried a pairing other than Chris and Trish... read to find out who!)


Lita held her keycard pressed firm between her lips as she struggled to maintain balance walking up the outdoor staircase of the hotel. The two huge gym bags slung over either shoulder were extremely heavy; Lita could feel herself buckling underneath the weight of them as she climbed the steel steps, grasping tightly with her left fist on the guard railing beside her.  
  
She was a strong girl, yes, but the bags were so heavy, she wondered if she might be lugging sacks of brick up the stairs. She didn't even remember then what it was she had packed in those bags, just how damned heavy they were, and the weather wasn't making things any easier.  
  
She had been caught in a pounding, rumbling thunderstorm. She wasn't able to leave the arena as early as she planned, and she was stuck in traffic for almost an hour before reaching the hotel itself, which wasn't too far from the arena. The loud, pouring rain fell heavy on her, making the process of getting up those stairs more difficult.  
  
The only noise around her were the incessant cracks and rumbles of some of the loudest thunderclaps she'd ever heard, that almost scared even a tough girl like her. And the passing of vehicles on the highway that the hotel lay off of, the fast and furious wheels spinning through the flood of water on the roads. That rain was so loud, and so heavy on her.  
  
Lita was soaked through the moment she stepped out of the car, and having so much weight on her shoulders, having so simple yet difficult a task to perform, she wanted to quit right there.  
  
Her long, red, wet hair clung to her skin, drooping over her cheeks, falling in front of her eyes. She could barely see in the dark as it was, and navigating her way up the outdoor staircase to the second floor was becoming strenuous and just frustrating.  
  
The redhead growled through her teeth, clenching the keycard tightly lugging the soaked gym bags up the stairs, annoyed as all hell with the weather, the dark, and the inconvenience. There were only a few lampposts outside the hotel, barely offering enough light to see a two foot radius around them.  
  
Gusts of wind ripped through the air, forcing the rain to fall harder, and her slicked hair further over her face. She let the shoulder of one of her bags slip over her arm for just long enough to brush her hair back and give an annoyed glare at the sky above her.  
  
She yanked the bag back over her shoulder, and managed another step before just stopping, midway to her room, turning to sit on one of the wet steel stairs and just wait in the rain. Her bags to both sides of her, she raised a hand and slipped the keycard out of her mouth into a tight grasp between her thumb and forefinger.  
  
She breathed heavily, helpless, staring at the marvelous display of lightning distant in the sky in front of her. Thunder cracked louder than before, and the rain and wind together picked up. She rested her elbows on her knees and placed her chin in her cupped palms, breathing a heavy sigh.  
  
Her pleading eyes rose toward the sky, scanning what she could see of the skyline behind the city. Clouds filled the sky. Dark clouds, that offered no luminance to the waiting ground below. No stars, no moon was present. Lita cursed under her breath at the utter distress she found herself in.  
  
After a few minutes of resting, regaining her breath on the steps, Lita returned the keycard to her pressed lips, and used both hands to hurl one bag up the last few remaining steps, leaving the other bag behind. She walked back for it and repeated her process, feeling absolutely soaked and just waiting to get out of this rain. It was useless, because there was no way that, after her bags had been left in the wetness so long, there was a single dry pair of clothing for her to change into.  
  
She squinted her face and forced the bag up the stairs in front of her, stopping at the top step before the roofed second floor. She took the keycard back into one of her palms, and with the other, grabbed the strap of one of her bags.  
  
Realizing she needed more leverage to drag the luggage over the floor, she reached her other grasp toward the shoulder strap, and pulled, but when she lost grip of the strap in one of her hands, her keycard slipped free, falling through the railing and the staircase to the ground one floor below her.  
  
"Shit!!" Lita cursed aloud, followed by another furious crack of thunder, and another gust of wind. She bit her tongue, stomped one of her feet to the floor, and pulled the bag a few feet to her hotel room door. She went back for the other bag, and did the same with that, but instead of retreating down the steps to search for her keycard, she just sat on one of her bags on the sheltered second floor of the hotel, staring into the rain, her soaking hair pooling over her face, stained with salt from a few tears that managed to stray from her eyes.  
  
"Damn it! God damn it!!!" She shook her head in disbelief at her misfortune. With no light, how was she supposed to find her card anyway? She was hopeless. She stretched her legs out on front of her, sitting one of the gym bags, and leaning against the cold metal of the door.  
  
She spent ten minutes just staring out into the weather, not a thought tracing over her mind, feeling chills rake over her body through the soaked fabric of her shirt and pants. What a smart idea it was not to wear a jacket to the arena that day. How very utterly brilliant.  
  
It was colder than she could have imagined, and with the wind on her dampened flesh, one shrill icy shiver shot through her body like electric, stinging at her skin and making her tremble fiercely. She wrapped her arms around herself to attempt at concealing any warmth left in her. Her lips quivered at the chill, and the water her hair retained dripped over her face in cold streams.  
  
The rain dripping from her own body and her two bags formed a puddle at the entrance of her hotel room. She was just going to have to wait out the night... wait through the cold and the dark, damp, pounding, thundering atmosphere, until the morning came and there was enough light to see.  
  
She leaned her head into the small nook between the door and the walls outside, shivering fiercely, and closed her eyes. She of all people was faced with the most horrible night she could imagine. And she didn't feel she'd done anything to deserve this. Slowly, she drifted into a light, unproductive slumber, no other choices left for her.  
  
"Lita? Lita, how long have you been out here?" Fingers tapped at her shoulder, and a voice rose in her head that she inquired whether or not to respond to. Slowly she shook her head, realizing where she was, hearing the rain, the rustle of the wind, the thunder continue to shriek through.  
  
"Lita, hun, come on..." The gentle voice urged her out of her sleep, and her arms folded around her waist were replaced with those of another, lifting her from the uncomfortable position she sat in.  
  
Her eyes softly fluttered open, the dark inside her eyelids just as piercing in the night around her, and feeling completely drained, she suddenly collapsed into the arms that steadied her before she could realize whose they were.  
  
"Easy, babe, easy. What are you doing out here?" He supported her weight by wrapping an arm around her waist and holding her upright, the back of his other hand brushing the moisture and lingering rain droplets from her forehead. He blew warm air onto her cheek, and she finally opened her eyes, coming to her senses.  
  
"Christian?" She breathed slowly, still just a bit dazed, her voice shaky, her eyes slightly narrowed.  
  
"Yeah, come on, let's get you inside. Shhh..." he cooed into her ear, trying to relax her, supporting her as he carried the drenched, wrecked women back to his room just around the corner.  
  
The two slipped into his room, and he sat her down on the bed, folding the sheets and blankets on the bed around her shivering form, hugging the covers tightly to her body, rubbing his arms up and down her sides briskly, trying to add friction between her bare flesh and the fabric. He ran back out the door, leaving it open just slightly, and retrieved her bags.  
  
Shutting the door behind him, one last cold draft blew in on them. Lita felt the breeze on her cheeks, but the rest of her body was taken with the warmth of the blankets she sat wrapped in.  
  
Her lips continued to quiver, her teeth chattering together as she inhaled quickly, deeply, and let slow breaths out one by one. Christian grabbed the towels from the bathroom, and rushed to her side, wrapping one of them over her head, leaving only her face exposed. He knelt in front of her at the side of the bed, reaching through the folds of the many blankets he had the diva huddled in. He found both her hands shaking, desperately clinging to the fabric, trying to wrap the comforters around herself as tightly as she possibly could, though she was too week to have too much an effect.  
  
He took both her palms in his briskly rubbed them together, raising them to his lips and breathing moist, but warm air, onto her iced fingertips.  
  
"There, Lita, that's it. Warming right up." He smiled at her, but she was too delirious and frightened to manage one back at him. She was frozen to her core. "God... how long were you out there?"  
  
Lita's eyes searched the room for a clock, darting over the walls and the appliances in the room until she met with bright red numbers on a digital alarm clock at his bedside. It was almost 5:00. She remembered leaving the arena at midnight, meaning she must have been outside in the rain in nothing but a thin t-shirt and sweatpants for at least four hours, soaked, cold, helpless.  
  
Christian stood up, and slowly lifted and sat Lita further back on the bed, climbing into it with her. "Come on, come on," he whispered to her, pulling her into him. She felt like a cocoon, and she felt completely helpless herself, dependant on Christian's selfless acts to keep her from freezing to death. At least she was getting warmer.  
  
"Say something... just let me know you can. Are you getting any better, any warmer? Talk to me, hun, please?"  
  
She could only barely nod her head and manage a muffled "mmhmm" in response to him. She felt like her blood had stopped running, like she was hollow, and the cold of her body still surpassed the heat of anything around her.  
  
"Good, good. I'll take that." He leaned so very slowly back, pulling her shoulders down to the bed so that she was lying still on her side, facing him, encased in the warm blankets. He sat upright next to her.  
  
Lita was just as confused as she was in pain. She had never seen Christian make the slightest concerned gesture with anyone. It was almost surreal, how affectionate and caring he seemed with her now. She felt his palm over her cheek, the contrast between his warm skin on her cold numbing.  
  
He whispered to her, coaxing her, trying to put her to sleep, the backs of his fingers sliding over the side of her face, pushing her wet hair from her skin. He edged himself down onto the bed so that he was lying, facing her, a look of worry in his eyes, almost like he cherished her right then. Almost like she meant something to him.  
  
Gathering her strength, most of his warmth and the warmth of the blankets settling into her, she returned his gaze, hesitating before softly breathing his name. "C- Christian..."  
  
"Yes?" His brows arched, and he leaned against his hand, his elbow bent, propping him upward.  
  
"Why?" she asked calmly, finally able to speak without her shivering and heavy breaths breaking her words apart.  
  
He cocked his head, his eyes drawing down her body. He slowly peeled the layers of covering out from under her, laying the blankets over her, and tucking the folds just beneath her body, holding the warmth she had recovered inside her. "Why what, babe?"  
  
She took a deep breath before continuing. "This. Me. Why?"  
  
He couldn't help but smile. "If it was me out there, you would have done the same thing, sweets. You don't just leave someone sleeping out in the rain. It was freezing out there, you're freezing now."  
  
She swallowed, her throat clearing somewhat. His face was so close to hers, she could feel his breath on her. It was a nice sentiment, Christian playing hero, she was just confused as to why. He'd never bothered with purposely going out of his way to help someone before.  
  
"D-did you just... decide to h... hop out of bed at f-five in the morning to see if... someone was sleeping out in the s-torm?"  
  
He chuckled. "Yeah, babe, I wasn't too busy doing anything else. I just thought 'why the hell not go search for freezing divas to save?'"  
  
She closed her eyes and Christian swore he caught a smile on her lips before she blinked them open. This made him grin. He decided to just lay next to her for a few minutes more, just keeping watch over her, just allowing her to steal more of his warmth. There was nothing between them, and he normally wouldn't be showing such consideration to someone, even someone as gorgeous as her. He just wasn't that type of person.  
  
She just needed it, and he realized that she needed someone, so he gave in. A spur of the moment type decision. He woke up a few hours early, and just decided to walk out into the rain, admiring storms like this he rarely ever saw. He just happened to catch her sleeping less than soundly in the bitter cold, and if he left her, if anyone had left her shivering, wet, trapped outside of her hotel room, it would weigh heavily on their conscience.  
  
He didn't know how she had managed to lock herself out, he just assumed that she didn't want to be there. There aren't too many people who sleep in soaked clothing in frigid weather at their own will.  
  
It was nothing personal, just an act of courtesy on his part. He was known to be mean, maybe even unfeeling or spiteful, nothing any beautiful woman like her would ever be interested in, so he'd given up on that hope long ago. He'd never felt actually attached to any woman he'd been with, and he didn't expect them to truly be attached to him considering his personality. It still never hurt to once in a while help someone in need out.  
  
Lita caught a look in his eye for maybe just a short moment, but a look nevertheless. A look that was FOR her, not just at her. Something that, even by coincidence, she never expected to see in Christian. It still made her think, even made her heart jump a little, the blood flow finally becoming evident to her.  
  
"So you... just wanted to do this for me. Not for you. You just felt like helping me, because it was the right thing to do."  
  
"Yes. Is there a problem with that?" That look disappeared, but his eyes never left hers. He was looking directly at her, touching her in some incoherent way. Something pulling at her, for whatever reason. Something.  
  
"You don't even talk to me. You don't even look at me just because you want to. You don't do things for me, I don't get why you did this..." She was somewhat shocked at herself after realizing what she had said. She sounded so careless, pinning motives on him, attacking his reasons. She was able to fidget one of her hands free from her cocoon and bring it to her mouth, biting at her fingertip. "I mean..."  
  
Christian sat up, looking at her with a sort of disgust at her comment. "Well, sorry, Princess, for wanting to help you out. For not wanting you to freeze to death out there until someone else came along. For just wanting you to be okay. Sorry for caring so much. Sorry for being so damn unlike myself for just a minute."  
  
She saw immediately how defensive her accusations made him, but she stubbornly became just as defensive herself. "I... I'm... Christian, I think you're hiding something."  
  
His gaze on her softened for just a moment as she spoke, before tensing back up again. "What, what am I hiding, if you know everything."  
  
She used her free hand to slowly push herself up, ease herself into a sitting position, to be level with him. The feeling in her body was finally returning. "I don't know everything, and I don't know what it is you're hiding, if anything, but you looked at me a few moments ago like you were. Like there was something behind that stare of yours." Her eyes narrowed. Christian rolled his eyes.  
  
"First of all, sweetheart, I have no idea what you're saying. You need to learn to make some sense when you talk. Second, just because I'm not doing nice things for you every day, I have to have some sort of ulterior motive to do one for you now?" He pushed himself off of the bed, his gaze shifting, his eyes locking at a corner of the room. "And I'm not hiding anything. I can't take you in from the cold because I'm not Prince Charming when you're not in trouble?"  
  
She insisted, in the back of her mind, that while he was right about everything else, he WAS hiding something. Lita was always right about these things. She opened her mouth to speak before his eyes were on her again. She stopped.  
  
"Because I'm not so fucking predictable like most people, I'm hiding something."  
  
Lita felt that cold rush back to her, this time, feeling the cold in his glare. She wasn't trying to accuse him, she wasn't trying to force anything out of him. She just wanted to know why this wasn't the Christian he showed her before. Why he wasn't like this all the time. She took a deep breath, and just spoke the words she should have said in the first place.  
  
"Thank you, Christian." Her lips began to quiver again. He looked at her as if forgiving her earlier mentions of him, but also freezing evilly through her. The thing so strange about him was that she couldn't read his eyes, or anything else of him. Maybe that was why she thought he was hiding something. He was the first person she just couldn't see through.  
  
For some strange reason, every word Lita said to him had a strange affect on him. While he wanted to slap the words out of her mouth, he was at the same time intrigued by her inquiry. He liked feeling as though she wanted to know him. Her words, and the way she said them, made him feel like she was interested in the person inside of him that his alternating, contradicting actions were both part of at the same time.  
  
She just looked at him, capturing his gaze, his beautiful eyes she connected with so deeply, but simply couldn't read. "So you saw me... and what did you initially think?"  
  
"Well, there was the 'what the hell is she doing out here' thing..." He sat back down on the bed, his eyes caught on her lips for a few moments before returning to her eyes. "Honestly? When I first saw you?"  
  
She nodded, her face so straight, her attention on him as he spoke, his voice so much deeper and calm than a few minutes before.  
  
"How goddamned sexy you looked all wet like that." His mouth was left open slightly, his eyes on her face, tracing her features. Her hair was still damp, some gathered strands still slicked, sticking to the sides of her face, bunched up, gnarled in the back of her head, wavy, looking like she'd just been sexed. The innocence on her lips, the saliva making them glisten as she licked them. Her eyes so concrete, eyelids half-lowered.  
  
"Still do." He eyed her, catching his own breath. Lita just sat there, staring back at him, her expression still. The blankets and sheets that enveloped her slowly fell over her shoulders. She was still cold, and wet, still so pained from the freezing of her skin, the slowing of her blood flow.  
  
She found herself unable to speak, but Christian just continued. "You know... I don't think I ever knew how gorgeous you were before now. If there's anything I'm hiding it's that I want you..." He gulped, looking toward the floor, pulling back from her a bit.  
  
Lita felt her heart rise into her throat at that comment. The deep sincerity in his voice as those words left his mouth made her weak. Her pulse rose just hearing him say that. She didn't expect him to say it, even though the look in his eyes made her aware of how he felt about her every time he looked at her. That was one thing he could read, his reaction to her, how he wanted her.  
  
"And you don't know me well enough to say that confidently. I could stalk right up to you and slap the taste out of your mouth right now." Even though she found it sometimes hard to appreciate complements that were simply sexual, she loved how he was honest in his tone, and how he seemed scared of her reply. How even in proclaiming lust for her, he seemed so true to her in those moments, when he spoke, when he looked at her.  
  
"I don't just do things with people I don't know. I'm not like that." Her voice was soft, calm. She leaned forward, crawling toward him a bit, her skin still chilled as she touched his arm.  
  
"I'm not asking you to. I wouldn't." He looked over at her, the chill of her touch running over his skin, the hairs on his arm standing on end with the cold and his nervousness. "But you're sexy, that's the first thing I thought. I could have left you there, stayed with you outside instead of bringing you in. Just so you'd stay so shaky and wet and I could just watch you. Watch you until you woke up. If you woke up."  
  
She shook her head. "If... You're so mean." A light smile played across her lips. "But you didn't. You brought me in here. It could have gone either way, but... you, you actually wanted me to get better."  
  
He kept his eyes intent on her. "I still don't know why that surprises you."  
  
"You know, I don't either. You were so sweet to me, and now that I know you can be... you can't ignore me anymore. You can't just brush me aside." She snaked her body around so that she was sitting beside him, still snuggled in the blankets he had wrapped her in. "Now that I know you can be like this, do things like this, don't think you can go back." She turned her head and looked directly into his eyes, his face only inches from hers. Before she could realize what she said or did, before she could regain control over herself, she slid her cold hand over his shoulder and around his neck. He shuddered slightly at the instant chill.  
  
She licked along the inside of her lips, giving him a straight stare, her heart pumping right out of her chest. Her eyes watered just slightly, so soft, her gaze so pure. "I want to kiss you."  
  
Christian could only stare at her, stare into her eyes, taking her words in. His heart rhythm matched hers, beating so hard he could barely breathe. He swallowed and struggled to regain his breath, air filling his lungs and just as quickly flowing back out as he replied to her in a deep, low, breathy whisper, "Then why don't you?"  
  
Her gaze switched so slowly from his eyes to his lips and back as her face neared his. She reached her other arm out, placing her hand behind his neck with her other, and her eyes gently fluttered closed.  
  
As soon as their lips met, Christian couldn't help himself. He placed his hands on her waist and urged her closer to him. The blankets and sheets around Lita fell to the floor, her body now only receiving heat from his touch.  
  
Their lips were warm and moist against each other, the electricity in the touch flowing through their bodies. Lita scooted her body closer to his, crossing her arms over his neck. Her still soaked shirt pressed against him as he pulled her into him, the cold moisture on him, the icy shock.  
  
Christian slowly tilted his head, his lips parting a sliver, taking hers with him. Their breaths were thin, but heavy on each other.  
  
Christian sucked her bottom lip just the slightest bit into his mouth, slowly pulling back from her, long enough to only look at her as she opened her eyes, shaking. The two spent a moment just staring into each other, still only inches apart, their lips wet and shining.  
  
Immediately, their lips returned to each other, open and hungry. Their breaths mixed, the warmth, the heat radiating from them. Lita pulled him even closer to her, and he ran his hands up her back, his fingers playing in the ends of her hair, still wet. She breathed hard into him, her nails tracing so gently up his neck, her fingers brushing over his hair.  
  
Christian ignored how cold she still was, how the rain water squeezed from her shirt into him as she pushed tightly into him. The warmth that they felt then was enough to disappear the chill from her body.  
  
The contours of their lips were fit perfectly for each other. Their tongues as they began to graze each other in the warmth and moisture of their mouths were so sensory, sending waves of heat and passion through their bodies.  
  
Lita's chest heaved in and out against Christians. He could sense the emotion within her. The taste of her mouth, the flick of her tongue, everything about her made his heart jump. Something about her, the way she kissed, was so different than any other girl. She broke the kiss and gasped, but stopped to just look at Christian, emotion flooding from her through the look in her eyes.  
  
His were still closed, the warmth and wetness of her mouth still on his lips. He slowly opened his eyes, immediately sensing question in her, a sense of vulnerability, her heart open to him.  
  
He pulled her tightly to him, resting his chin on her shoulder, nuzzling her gently. He could feel her breath on his shoulder, and his embrace returned by hers. Her fingers curled on his back, gripping him. The strength in her embrace making him wonder whether she'd ever let him go.  
  
Something rushed through him then, through that hug, that he hadn't even felt in her kiss. Something he'd never felt with a woman. Something like love. Something like pure and honest love, which he had never even dreamed of falling to, or receiving. The way she felt with her arms wrapped around him, her breath on him, it was a feeling he never expected. Just that embrace, the delicacy of her. The emotion in her had rubbed off on him, straight through him.  
  
He had to push her away though, still as gently as he could.  
  
Her arms fell to her sides, and she looked at him. He looked back, a smile curling over his lips. His gaze was warm on her, and she recognized a true affection in his eyes, the first emotion she was certain of.  
  
"I can't go back?"  
  
She looked downward , her eyes swaying from side to side unhurriedly. She waited a bit before responding, her eyes glassing over a little in impressionability. She raised her head and returned his stare, keeping her eyes warm and true on his, though now defenseless. Her voice was gentle but shaky. "Do you want to?"  
  
His expression brightened quickly, a wide smile showing through. He just sat and smiled at her for a few seconds before lowering his head, and clearing his joy. He returned to absolute seriousness, his eyes rising to meet hers before his head lifted. He was intent on just the look in her eyes, just that honesty, that openness he had never experienced in anyone. His heart felt fuller than it ever had before, and he was nothing but warmth in that moment.  
  
He blinked. "Not at all," he whispered, and kissed her once more. 


End file.
